Calcutta High Court upholds Bengal’s pay revision cut-off for college teachers

Kolkata: The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday dismissed a petition filed by teachers of state-aided colleges challenging the West Bengal government’s decision to implement revised pay scales under the 7th Central Pay Commission only from January 1, 2020.

Justice Subhendu Samanta ruled that the state was within its rights to fix the cut-off date and that courts could not interfere with such financial policy decisions. The petitioners, who included teachers from government-aided colleges, had argued that while the University Grants Commission (UGC) implemented the 7th CPC pay revision with effect from January 1, 2016, West Bengal delayed the benefit by four years. They contended that this deprived them of pay protection and parity with teachers of central universities.

Senior counsel for the teachers submitted that the state had earlier implemented the 6th CPC revision in line with UGC’s schedule, but this time failed to assign any reason for fixing 2020 as the effective date.

The state countered that colleges and universities under its purview are funded entirely from state resources, without central assistance. It argued that the MHRD’s 2017 memorandum on pay revision was only recommendatory and that the State had framed its own scheme, deciding to implement the revised scales from 2020.

The UGC, which was also a respondent, maintained that its regulations were mandatory in nature.

The court, however, observed that Clause 16 of the Central memorandum left it to states to adopt or reject the scheme, subject to financial conditions.

Holding that the state was not legally bound to implement the revision from 2016, the court concluded that such matters of fiscal policy lay outside the scope of judicial review.

The writ petition was accordingly dismissed.